Hur­ri­cane Melis­sa was grind­ing across Cu­ba on Wednes­day, weak­en­ing to a Cat­e­go­ry 2 storm, af­ter pum­mel­ing Ja­maica as one of the strongest At­lantic hur­ri­canes on record, the U.S. Na­tion­al Hur­ri­cane Cen­tre said.

Hun­dreds of thou­sands of peo­ple in Cu­ba had been evac­u­at­ed to shel­ters. A hur­ri­cane warn­ing was in ef­fect for Gran­ma, San­ti­a­go de Cu­ba, Guan­tá­namo, Hol­guin and Las Tu­nas provinces as well as the south­east­ern and cen­tral Ba­hamas.

Melis­sa had top sus­tained winds of 105 mph (165 kph) and was mov­ing north-north­east at 14 mph (22 kph) ac­cord­ing to the Na­tion­al Hur­ri­cane Cen­tre in Mi­a­mi. The hur­ri­cane was cen­tred 45 miles (70 kilo­me­tres) north­west of Guan­tá­namo, Cu­ba, and 205 miles (335 kilo­me­tres) south of the cen­tral Ba­hamas.